What bankers (and other Wall Street titans) need to learn from Girl Scouts and First Year Law Students

Always leave a place better than you found it — that’s from the Girl Scouts.

You are responsible for the reasonably foreseeable consequences of your actions — that’s from the First Year Law Students.

My heart is breaking as I read about Haiti. My blood is boiling as I read the testimony from top bankers appearing before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission and today’s Wall Street Journal headline that these same banks are set for record pay.

The bankers somehow seem to think that the financial collapse was an accident — and since they didn’t mean to trash the economy — they are off the hook for the consequences of their actions.

Here’s a lesson from the First Year Law Students — that’s not how it works. You are responsible for the consequences of your actions if you could reasonably have foreseen that your conduct would cause the injury. Palsgraf v. Long Island R.R. Co., Ct. of App. of N.Y., 248 N.Y. 339, 162 N.E. 99 (N.Y. 1928). This is a personal injury case — but it set the standard for how our free society allocates risk and responsibilty. I don’t understand how you can expect freedom (or a free market) without also accepting responsibility for the reasonably foreseeable consequences of your actions.

And here’s a lesson from Girl Scouts — It doesn’t matter what the law says. You should do the right thing and try hard to leave a place better than you found it.

A Presidio Park Ranger shared with me the first time I attended the annual Golden Gate Bridging event, which brings 8,000 Girl Scouts to Crissy Field, that she always loves hosting the Girl Scout event, because afterwards Crissy Field is the cleanest it is all year. There aren’t many 8,000 person events you can say that about. Sure enough — at the end of the event, Girl Scouts joined arms and walked the field, picking up every piece of litter they encountered along the way.

Many of us are drowning in the debris of Wall Street’s derivatives party. Wall Street needs to do the right thing. They made a mistake, and even if we take them at their word that it was an accident — they have a responsibility to help clean up the mess.

The clean up is a lot more complicated than joining arms to pick up litter. There are smart people on Wall Street, and I hope that if they learned anything from this debacle, it is that they don’t have all the answers. They need to dedicate major resources to work with the government and Main Street to figure out how they can best contribute to cleaning up the foreseeable consequences of their high risk behavior while protecting our economy from such behavior in the future.